Gigabyte has five "tiers" of upcoming AM2 motherboards, each denoted
by an "S." An "S5" motherboard is more high-end than
an "S4" motherboard. Each "S" denotes a different
feature, such as SLI, Silent, etc.

Like the ASUS offerings, Gigabytes best of breed motherboards for AM2 will feature
NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset. The M59SLI-S5 has dual x16 PCIe
graphics, dual eSATA ports, dual BIOSes, ten USB 2.0 interfaces and eight SATA
3.0Gbps interfaces. One UDMA PATA interface is provided for legacy
optical storage devices. Like other nForce 590 motherboards, the
motherboard also features dual Gigabit LAN but over the Marvell Gigabit
PHY. Gigabyte has two Firewire-400 headers on the motherboard with an
additional third interface on the rear I/O panel.

The M59SLI-S5 also has the widely talked about RealTek ALC888DD
"Dolby Digital" audio codec, an upgrade from the ALC883 codec that
includes digital microphone support for VOIP and video conferencing. Gigabyte's
internal roadmap claims that this motherboard is Tritium-ready,
meaning it was designed with NVIDIA's specifications for voltage tolerances and
overclocking. More importantly, the motherboard will automatically
overclock when NVIDIA-approved components are used in conjunction with one
another, such as a GeForce 7900 SLI pair.

A non-silent version of M59SLI-S5 same board will carry the "S4"
moniker, the M59SLI-S4. There are actually several features missing on
the "S4" motherboard that are found on the "S5," aside from
the heat pipes. For starters, the motherboard does not feature any
external SATA connectors and the internal SATA headers have been reduced from 8
to 6. Only one of the nForce PHY Gigabit headers are enabled, and only
one physical BIOS is present. The M59SLI-S4 also uses the ALC883 audio
codec instead of the ALC888DD. However, Tritium support
has not been removed on this board, so LinkBoost and other
features should still appear.

The nForce 570 M57SLI-S4 is Gigabyte's mid-range model for AM2. The board
does not feature Tritium, and like other nForce 570 motherboards,
utilizes only a single MCP55P core logic. The motherboard has dual PEG
adaptors, which will configure into dual x8 lane setups or a single x16
configuration depending on which graphics cards are present. Other than the
lack of Tritium support and dual x16 lanes, the M57SLI-S4 is virtually
identical to the M59SLI-S4.

Gigabyte has a few other oddballs to add to the mix as well, including an MCP51
SLI motherboard for AM2 that still uses the old NVIDIA paddle cards for SLI
support. In the value segment, Gigabyte will have an M55plus-S3G based on the
NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / MCP 430 matchup. An MCP51 version of this board is also expected
dubbed the M51GM-S2G. Just to wrap the whole bunch up, Gigabyte will also
introduce a VIA K8M890 based AM2 motherboard, the MV89M-S2.

Gigabyte also has its discrete Intel P965 motherboards slated for a mid-June
launch, followed by Viiv compatible G965 motherboards slated for an August
launch. Not many details of these motherboards are available yet, but we
expect to see more roadmap information within the next week or so.

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